Contrasts in a garden

From Today's Walk

Ooooh, snap!
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Cool engraving:

In a nearby P-Patch this person's garden detritus looks cooler than some of my intentional garden art...

Trying out the Fisheye feature of my camera. Most of my experiments were NOT successful, but I kind of like this one...

Let's see if you're old enough to get this reference: "Is it LIVE or is it Memorex?"

The BIGGEST "Lie of Omission"

My back yard is truly "Where the Wild Things Are"...wild blackberry, wild morning glory, wild dandelions, me after several hours of maddening weeding. Nevertheless, dedicated as I am to misleading photography, I managed to find these little oases of calm and beauty buried within the dispiriting jungle behind my house.
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Spring comes very early to the Pacific Northwest:
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. Weathered metal scrollwork on my equally weathered fence:
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These thrift store birdhouses are perched (somewhat precariously) on a discarded ladder. I felt so very "Salvage Studio" when I thought of displaying them thusly:
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And that, Gentle Readers, is all the news (from the garden) that's fit to print!

Son of "Lie of Omission"

OK, here are some misleading photos from my front yard. Well, actually this photo is NOT misleading...this poor birdcage fell off my deck in a windstorm and ended up suffering some serious structure damage...but I keep it on my front porch anyway.
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I got tired of these glass ornaments hanging in an indoor window so I moved them to the garden last year. They've weathered the elements awfully well...and I love the color they add. The stake is an old curtain rod from Ikea that I didn't need anymore; I plunked one half of it in the ground and used fishing line to tie the glass ornaments onto it. The 2 blue glass orbs in front are solar-powered and glow rainbow colors at night.
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My friend Tracie offered me this funky little house after she unearthed it in the wild jungle of her backyard when she first bought her home. Personally, I thought she was MENTAL to give it up, but she thought I was MENTAL to want it. Clearly, MENTAL is in the eye of the beholder...
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And this ethereal statue/vase was given to me by Piz, a dear friend who is an avid gardener and even more enthusiastic garden-arter.

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My Garden...A BIG Lie of Omission

OK...here's my disclosure. These photos of my yard are NOT representative of my garden in general. They are the tidy, fun, artistic bits...the ones that might make people say, "Wow...I wish MY garden were that nice." Gentle Readers, please understand that my garden is in fact NOT that nice. I very, very deliberately neglected to record the bedraggled, weed-ridden areas for posterity. Oh, they're there, all right...just ask my (long-suffering) neighbors. So enjoy the pictures, but you are NOT allowed to feel guilty for neglecting your garden for one single nano-second.

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This is the side of my house...a shady pathway that leads down to the (dreaded) backyard:

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A neighbor was giving away all of these bamboo stakes last summer so I scooped a bunch up and "planted" them on the side of my house. And the city of Seattle sells old street signs and I thought this one would be a fun addition:

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And here's a "plant" that even I can't kill!

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Bead garden

These rare plants grow only on Artgirl Island...